Six years after it first appeared as a pandemic-era virtual exhibit, Nu Africans is finally getting a physical home. Hammonds House Museum in Atlanta's West End will open the exhibition by artists Maurice Evans and Grace Kisa on Friday, September 18, with an opening reception running from 6:30 to 9 p.m., and the show will remain on view through December 13.
The exhibition brings together Evans's photography, painting, and mixed-media construction with Kisa's sculpture, portraying women as warriors and queens, according to Atlanta Daily World. Evans coined the term “Nu Africans” to describe diaspora descendants of enslaved West Africans who forged distinct traditions, ideologies, and cultural practices in response to historical displacement, according to WABE. The series frames African identity as plural, dynamic, and continually being made rather than something fixed by geography, per the same station's reporting.
From Zoom Screens to Gallery Walls
Nu Africans first premiered as Hammonds House's inaugural virtual exhibition on May 15, 2020, after the physical museum had closed for nearly two months during the early COVID-19 pandemic. That digital debut, curated by then-executive director Leatrice Ellzy, included Zoom interviews with the artists and an online party featuring DJ Salah Ananse, per the same account. This time around, the show will bring the work into physical space, the Atlanta Daily World reports.
In the exhibition, Kisa costumed the women photographed by Evans, blending the two artists' disciplines into a single visual language that the Atlanta Daily World describes as using Afrofuturism to imagine an alternative existence. The show addresses Black identity, memory, ancestry, place, and the contemporary experience of African-descended people, and aims to subvert stereotypes and prejudice while challenging viewers to consider beauty beyond a Eurocentric aesthetic, per the outlet's account.
Two Artists, Two Very Different Paths
Evans was born in Smyrna, Tennessee, and raised in Atlanta, graduating from Griffin High School before studying fashion illustration and being accepted to the Art Institute of Atlanta in 1986, according to the Atlanta Daily World. He held his first successful exhibition at Atlanta's juried Black Arts Festival in 1994 and has since bought a booth at the New York Art Expo and mass-produced artwork for museums and galleries internationally, the outlet notes. He typically begins mixed-media works with sketches of a concept before building them out with wood panels, acrylics, oils, encaustics, pen and ink, paper cutouts, motorized parts, and models.
Kisa, a Kenyan American artist based in Atlanta, has lived in Kenya, Ethiopia, Botswana, Virginia, and Georgia and is a graduate of the Art Institute in Atlanta, per the same reporting. She has worked as a professional artist for more than 20 years, primarily expressing herself through sculpture built from found and repurposed materials, including clay, metal, wood, fiber, and resin. Her work explores migration, belonging, and personal and ancestral histories, drawing inspiration from African astronomy and cosmology and treating digital networks as a contemporary counterpart to ancient sky-mapping, the Atlanta Daily World reports.
Kisa's public profile extends beyond the gallery. She collaborated with sculptor Ellex Swavoni on “One In All,” a piece acquired by Atlanta BeltLine Inc. in 2021 for installation along its Westside Trail, according to The European Cultural Centre, which notes that the sculpture has been associated with themes of unity and connection along the transit corridor. She has also exhibited in Personal Structures: Beyond Boundaries in 2024, at the 2023 International Sculpture Conference, and with the European Cultural Centre in Venice, Italy, in solo and group shows across the United States.
A West End Landmark With Deep Roots
Hammonds House Museum occupies a Victorian house that was once the residence of Dr. Otis Thrash Hammonds, an anesthesiologist who served as Chief of Staff at Southwest Community Hospital and was named 1985 Man of the Year by the Atlanta Medical Association, according to Black Art In America. Hammonds's Peeples Street house housed his personal art collection, and he also served on the board of the High Museum of Art before his death in June 1985 at age 55. After his death, the Fulton County Board of Commissioners acquired his home and 250-piece art collection in 1987, opening Hammonds House Museum on February 27, 1988, per Wikipedia.
The Victorian structure, built in 1857, is recognized as one of the three oldest remaining residential buildings in Atlanta's historic West End neighborhood, sitting near the Atlanta University Center. The museum's permanent collection has since grown from that original 250-piece gift to more than 450 works, including 18 pieces by collage artist Romare Bearden and the oldest known painting by 19th-century Black landscape painter Robert S. Duncanson, alongside works by Elizabeth Catlett, Jacob Lawrence, Sam Gilliam, and Hale Woodruff, according to the North American Reciprocal Museum Association.
Today, Hammonds House operates as an arts organization. The museum also presents exhibitions and community engagement programming tied to its current exhibition lineup.
Building on a Sculpture Garden Debut
Nu Africans arrives at Hammonds House on the heels of another major addition to the site. In September 2024, the museum unveiled the John Rhoden Sculpture Garden, its first permanent outdoor installation featuring 10 bronze and wooden works gifted by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. The garden remains part of the museum's footprint today, giving visitors an outdoor complement to the indoor galleries now hosting Evans and Kisa's work.
The exhibition's leadership lineage also traces a notable arc. Leatrice Ellzy, who curated the original 2020 digital debut while serving as Hammonds House executive director in 2020, later continued her career in arts leadership. Ellzy had previously worked at the National Black Arts Festival before her tenure at Hammonds House. Hammonds House's mission, per the museum, is to celebrate and share the cultural diversity and legacy of artists of African descent — a mission Nu Africans now fulfills in person at 503 Peeples Street SW, six years after it first flickered to life on a screen.
